Alor-Pantar Languages: origins and theoretical impact

Humanities

The many islands in Eastern Indonesia are notable for their high level of linguistic diversity. Most of these languages are endangered, being slowly replaced by the prestige language Indonesian - the national language - , or by a local variant of it.

This project studies the non-Austronesian languages the of Alor-Pantar archipelago of southeastern Indonesia. Until very recently the 15-20 Alor-Pantar languages were among the least well-documented languages of Indonesia, but a surge in field work efforts over the past decade has resulted in a wealth of new language data. The AP languages are of special interest because they have no established genetic relatives and are surrounded by Austronesian languages.